Seasoned marketers understand the need for defining goals at the start of any campaign,but those who are eager to get started often overlook this essential step. There are plenty ofdecisions to make when creating your marketing campaign. For example, you might want tomeasure success by aiming for higher rankings in search results or improving the conversionrate.

Specific goals depend on your business, current circumstances, and long-term goals. But inmost cases, it’s helpful to follow the SMART goal method, which stands for specific,measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Essentially, you want to make sureyou’re creating a goal you can actually fulfill.

Here are some examples of SMART goals you might create:

• Brand Awareness: Build brand awareness by 30% in six months.
• Social Media Followers: Increase social media followers by 2000 in three months.
• Search Engine Optimization: Improve search engine ranking by 10% in four months.

Knowing your target audience helps you improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. It can also help you save resources by narrowing the focus of your marketing efforts. That’s because once you identify your audience, you can understand what type of digital content they want to see and where they want to see it. For example, you might realize that your audience prefers blog content they can easily find and share on social media.

Knowing this, it might be in your best interest to focus your efforts on blog writing and social media marketing.

If you’re hoping to understand your target audience, there are two great ways you can getstarted: auditing your content and researching your competitors.

Setting a realistic budget is essential because it helps you determine what you can accomplish with the resources you have. Fortunately, digital marketing campaigns are cheaper than traditional marketing, meaning the same resources can bring more results. To create a budget, start by looking at your main goal, then look at what you need to accomplish to achieve it. For example, let’s say your goal was to increase brand awareness by 30% in six months. That goal will probably require content creation to bring people to your brand organically.

Depending on the content your audience wants to read or view, that might require a content production team. It might also require different kinds of tools or software your production team can use. Now you’re starting to understand more of what your campaign needs and the budget it requires.

Obviously, a digital marketing campaign requires some sort of digital media. That means you need to determine what you’re creating and how exactly you plan to create it. For example, let’s say you’re hoping to create written content for your brand. It’s good to know how you plan to create that content. That might include a few individual freelancers or a full team of in-house writers, editors, and quality assurance specialists. Whatever the case, it’s good to know what content you’re creating, who’s creating it, and how much of it you want to produce.

Sharing content on different platforms builds brand awareness. There are several channels to target your audience based on their personas. Customers respond differently to each forum, so spreading your message across multiple channels ensures a broader reach.Repurpose topics to save money and time.

According to the Digital Marketing Institute, several factors determine your preferredchannels, including:

• Number of social media channels you can effectively manage
• Channels your target audience uses
• Channels your competitors use
• Type of content you want to create

It is essential to use a reliable system to measure the success of your campaign. For the best results, each channel should have a unique framework that enables you to measure effectiveness. That way, you get insights into core metrics indicating whether the campaign is on track or requires corrective actions to ensure you meet set targets. In case you fail to meet your targets, have contingency plans in place to ensure the campaign’s success. You can effectively measure progress by learning from other successful marketing plans other brands have used.

One of the best tools you can use to measure your campaign’s success is Google Analytics.Analytics is free and pairs with your website to track its performance. You can see who views your content, how many visitors your website receives organically, and which pages they navigate to in a single session. You can also learn more about your audience, including where they’re located and their different demographics.